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UT Austin ranked No. 30 in new World University Rankings

On Thursday, July 5, The Center for World University Rankings announced its inaugural list of the top 100 universities in the world. The organization, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ranked universities on a set of seven criteria: education quality, faculty quality, alumni employment, patents, publishing, faculty research citations and influence.

“This ranking confirms what we've known for a long time — that world-class universities are built by world-class faculty,” said UT President Bill Powers.

The University of Texas at Austin ranked No. 30 based on the outlined qualifiers. Contributing to UT's high ranking are a host of prestigious awards that have been won by current faculty members, including the Nobel Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Turing Award and the Schock Prize.

“This ranking confirms what we've known for a long time — that world-class universities are built by world-class faculty,” said UT President Bill Powers in an official press release.

“I’m gratified that excellence at UT Austin has been recognized by yet another organization with a multifaceted analysis of the world’s best academies. This is more good news for Texas alumni, whose diplomas increase in value the higher our rankings go.”

Not surprisingly, The Center's No. 1 ranking went to Ivy League Harvard University, followed by elite insitutions MIT (No. 2) and Stanford University (No. 3).

Still, UT is in good company. Other Texas institutions on the list included UT Southwestern Medical Center (No. 29), Rice University (No. 57), Texas A&M (No. 73) and UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (No. 96).

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More Foraging

Free 'food forest' in East Austin expands with thousands of new plants

Angelina Alanis at Festival Beach Food Forest

Photo courtesy of KVUE

Angelina Alanis gives a tour of the garden, which is open to anyone.

In East Austin, there is an edible forest garden called Festival Beach Food Forest where anyone can walk around and harvest free produce, nuts, medicinal plant leaves and herbs. And over the summer, it grew to several times its size.

The forest has fig trees, peach trees, grapevines, asparagus and more that's not in season right now. You can grab passionfruit and plants like yaupon holly, with leaves that can make a caffeinated tea, rosemary and lemon balm.

"[Lemon balm] is part of the mint family," said Angelina Alanis, communication and partnership coordinator for Festival Beach Food Forest. "It has a lemony taste but it's good for a nervous stomach. I'm prone to anxiety so I always grab a hunk."

The food forest is located right next to Interstate 35 and Lady Bird Lake on 29 Waller St., near a part of town that's known for being a food desert, lacking grocery stores.

"There's as much as a 20-year life expectancy difference between parts of East and West Austin, and a lot of that comes down to food access, health care access and also access to nature."

Alanis said for the past nine years, the volunteer-based grassroots project been helping with the issue and just recently expanded in the summer from two-thirds of an acre of city parkland to over 3.5 acres.

"We're going to have hundreds of new trees," said Alanis. "We've already planted 150 new trees in the area and then thousands of plants on the ground."

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They also plan to add a community kitchen and a pavilion to do things like cooking classes or informational sessions.

Read the full story at KVUE.com.

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